2009 Pragmatic Recap

Jo-Lynne at Musings of a Housewife is hosting a 2009 Blog Recap Carnival and, having fallen off the blog wagon over the last month, I figured it would be a fairly painless way to ease back into my blog. I even remembered my WordPress password!

For each month of 2009, I’ve posted the title (and link) and quoted the first few lines of the FIRST post of that month:

“So why am I NESTING? I’ve had this massive surge of momentum and have been clearing out and re-organizing for weeks. I’ve even been . . . decorating.”

(This post contained LOTS of photos. And now I’m doing it AGAIN. I’ve already made one trip to the Salvation Army, with AT LEAST one more in the next few days. Maybe two, it depends on how much stuff I can pack in the bed of the truck. I’ve already been entering charitable donations in It’s Deductible, the FREE online valuing tool! Hopefully, FirstHusband will also take a trip to the dump in the next next few days.)

“Twice now, I’ve walked the track during FavoriteSon’s track practice. Since they actually USE the track during track practice, I’ve been walking outside the outside lane (lane #8).”

(I did this the entire track season last year! Track season is coming up again, so I’m glad I’ve been reminded of this post. Last year, I found a Track Calculator showing the distance around for each lane of the track. Since I walk OUTSIDE the 8th lane, the distance around is more than if I were to walk in lane 1.)

“Busy, Busy, Busy. The only thing I like better than eating Cream Cheese Chicken is MAKING it. Soooooo easy! Dump everything in a crockpot and come back later. That’s what I’m doing today.”

(By FAR, Cream Cheese Chicken is my favorite FAST recipe. Starting with FROZEN chicken! But this post also highlighted a new product called “Voila” which I use as a base and add more veggies and shrimp or chicken.)

“Kristin over at We are THAT Family is is hosting a themed edition of Works for Me Wednesday this week! Here are some of my favorite summer recipes! Click on the links for the original post and the ingredients/recipe.”

“I’m still here – just working a LOT. And climbing a learning curve for the work projects. Trying to steal hours in the fragmented chaos to actually focus on the learning and the work. The kind of work that requires complete and total quiet, lots of gum and Diet Coke.”

(I’m tired just reading the August 2009 post. I had a LOT going on. And, although it took me a few months, my business website is new and improved – still missing some pages, but for the most part, it’s a MILLION times better than what it was. The client project I was working on did get finished and worked well enough that the client wants more in 2010, so that’s more answered prayer (I was praying for compensated work.) Still purging stuff from my house. Where does it all come from? And I HATE shopping! So WHERE does it come from?

“In my post, “blessings require change.” on September 30th, I shared how God gave me an opportunity to give my minivan to a family who needed it.”

(A testimony to God’s AMAZING power. I’m still so thankful that I got to be a part of this miracle. More answered prayer came when I got share the story with my entire church as I delivered the message at all four services on Women’s Sunday in October. I had been praying for God to bless me with more opportunities to serve Him with my voice – singing and speaking. He answered my prayer when I was asked to deliver the message AND lead music that Sunday. God is so good.)

“When someone asks me what I do, I know they’re talking about work. Outside my home. Other than being a mom. I usually answer, “I’m a trainer and consultant.”

Often, that’s the end of it. Sometimes, if they’re interested, they’ll wrinkle their eyebrows and ask something like:

What is it you do exactly?”

(Don’t be alarmed if you still don’t understand what I do, even after reading this post. Most likely you fell asleep in the middle of reading it.)

So that’s a little of my 2009. I’ve still got some work to finish up on the client upgrade which consumed much of my November and December, but I hope I can keep up with the blogging. It’s a great source of stress relief. I’ve got a few other projects coming up, both in computer consulting and faith based speaking, but I’ll talk about them later – well probably not the computing part – that can get significantly boring for most normal people.

Me? I know I’m not normal. One of my favorite Christmas gifts is the terabyte external hard drive FirstHusband got me. oooo. ahhhh. Time to start transferring the family movies from tape to digital storage. But I’m thinking I might want two terabyte drives. As a backup. hmmm.